"Can equally be enjoyed by those about to retire needing a push to get into a new hobby and those who hate running but love Italy - particularly the food." (London Evening Standard)
Approaching 60, Anthony Jennings was ready for a rest. He had emigrated to Italy 35 years ago, married an Italian and raised a family, worked as a consultant for the Italian government and the UN in sectors ranging from art theft to nutrition, from child abduction to high speed rail and the protection of Mafia witnesses.
Then, aged 58, he ran the Rome marathon, and was hooked. The Last Carbonara chronicles his development from desk-bound invalid with a dodgy back to assured and stylish athlete doing one hundred miles a week, winning cups and prizes, beating Olympic gold medallists, outsprinting people half his age.
This is a book about running in Italy, but it also a picture of a country, and a fast-paced account of the author's love-hate relationship with his adopted land. Stories of training and races on small Tuscan islands, in the heart of Rome, on the Amalfi coast or in Puglia are seamlessly interwoven with insights into Italy: how to buy the best fish, how Spartacus' defeated rebels were crucified, and how priceless antiquities are looted from old Etruscan tombs. We learn how on a calm evening the Captain of the Costa Concordia sailed a billion-dollar cruise liner into an island, and how Silvio Berlusconi kept himself out of jail through decades of bizarre sexual and financial misdoings.
This is a book for anyone who has dreamed of a life in Italy or longed to understand the country, anyone who has wished they could run among classical ruins, olive trees and turquoise seas. It is an insider's view of what Italians themselves call the bel paese - the beautiful country - by turns exuberantly comic, darkly misanthropic, and self-mocking, and above all a lyrical and poignant evocation of the beauty and the transience of human life.

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• Print Length: 226 Pages
• File Size: 1,920 KB